Blackmail

MICHAEL SMERCONISH is, of course, right - Bill O'Reilly is being blackmailed under the guise of sexual harassment. The downside of women's liberation is that many are now free to ruin the lives of famous men by accusing them of harassment. Most such cases never go to trial - the men pay the women off, but the stain of the accusation remains. It obvious that O'Reilly didn't pursue Andrea Mackris - because she is just so darn plain. Famous men can get models, they don't have to settle for hausfraus.

An Allentown man was accused yesterday by a federal grand jury of trying to blackmail his former employer, the Catelli Bros. meat products wholesaler, by threatening to tell authorities its products were tainted with bacteria. The alleged scheme by James O. Marsh, Catelli's former director of quality assurance, was thwarted before the false allegations could become public. Had the allegations been made publicly, Assistant U.S. Attorney Floyd Miller said, the impact could have been "devastating" on Catelli Bros.

Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose will tell investigators that accusations that he bet on baseball games were the result of an ex-friend's attempt to blackmail him, the Cincinnati Post reported yesterday. Four sources close to baseball's probe of Rose told the newspaper that the Reds manager would inform investigators that Paul Janszen, a Cincinnati bodybuilder who is now serving a six-month sentence for evading income taxes, tried twice last fall to blackmail him. Janszen said that unless Rose paid him $40,000, he would tell baseball officials that he had been betting on games, according to the sources.

Last Thursday night, Mary Louise Froschauer stepped outside Tom's Pub into a cold drizzle and headed home to West South Street in Kennett Square. She never made it. On Sunday, her wet and muddy body was found less than a few blocks from the home she shared with her mother, lying, where a passer-by spotted it, in a small stream near a set of railroad tracks in New Garden Township. State police said there were no signs of abuse. No bruises or cuts. No blood. There were few clues.

A former executive of a Delaware County machine company pleaded guilty yesterday to a federal blackmail charge in an ongoing probe of alleged kickbacks in government contracts. Frederick Knoll of Malvern, who worked until 1990 as comptroller of Folcroft's Tura Machine Co., agreed to a one-count indictment and pledged to cooperate in the prosecution of former Tura president Kenneth Narzikul. A government plea memorandum released at the hearing in federal court in Philadelphia said Knoll had discovered that Tura was paying bribes to an employee of New Jersey's Foster Wheeler Corp.

Massachusetts basketball star Marcus Camby filed a criminal complaint in Hartford, Conn., yesterday, alleging that he was blackmailed by a would-be agent who tried to woo him as a client. State's Attorney James Thomas said he would begin an investigation to determine whether the case should be prosecuted. "I'm not at liberty to discuss the allegations," Thomas said. "It will be investigated as a criminal complaint, and we will determine if criminal charges are warranted and what they will be down the line.

To blackmail, or not to blackmail? That, to some, is the question when considering how best to get the state of Pennsylvania to support and rebuild its own mass-transit systems, such as SEPTA. At issue is a legislative provision in the federal transportation bill sponsored by Rep. William H. Gray 3d that would cut 25 percent of federal highway funds to states that don't have a dedicated funding base, such as a special tax, to support mass transit. Pennsylvania is one of those states that doesn't.

ATLANTIC CITY - A former Atlantic City official jailed for his role in a sex-video blackmail scheme has died. State corrections officials said Ronald Callaway, who would have turned 56 this month, died Saturday at a Trenton hospital. The cause of death was not disclosed. Callaway, also known as Jihad Q. Abdullah, was serving his term at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton. It was not clear how long he had been in the hospital. Callaway, his younger brother, and a family friend were convicted in the blackmail scheme mastermind by another brother, former City Council President Craig Callaway.

A pen salesman and his wife, believed to be fugitives, are being sought by federal authorities for allegedly stealing more than $2 million from a tiny Bucks County public school district by blackmailing its business manager. Marc Suckman, 36, and his wife, Teresa, 33, of Burbank, Calif., allegedly threatened to expose that the manager had accepted a cheap tape recorder as a gift after ordering pens for the school district from them, authorities have charged. Between March 1984 and March 1988 the Suckmans forced Kathryn Hock, business manager of the New Hope-Solebury School District, to send them school funds to pay for pens she never ordered and they never shipped, authorities said.

It's hard to say how things will shake out for Miss New Jersey. Amy Polumbo, the 22-year-old beauty queen from Howell, was still holding onto her crown and her honor despite an anonymous threat - which some are calling blackmail - to publicly release certain photographs if she had not given up her title by yesterday. Meanwhile, her lawyer, Anthony Caruso, was "working furiously" with law enforcement, he said, to find out if a crime had been committed against his client. He also was working with Facebook to see if it could help determine who might have taken photos from Polumbo's site.

The affair was in 1993 and lasted three months. But one suburban doctor says the dalliance with "Black Madam" Padge Victoria Windslowe cost decades of personal anguish, demands for money, and involvement in a criminal probe of her silicone buttocks-enhancement business. James Taterka, a Montgomery County gastroenterologist, told a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury Tuesday that he was ashamed of cheating on his wife and humiliated that he and his medical practice had been dragged into Windslowe's murder trial.

Need a little motivation to lose those nagging 10 pounds? Or seal the big deal? Or book that beach vacation? Aherk! suggests putting your online rep, well, on the line. The beta website with the goofy name amps up the pressure by asking users to post a goal and deadline. But it doesn't stop there. The user also e-mails Aherk! an embarrassing photo - referred to as "the bomb" on the site. When the deadline hits, Facebook friends vote on whether the goal was achieved. If not, up goes that incriminating pic at the expense of some social media status.

ATLANTIC CITY - A former Atlantic City official jailed for his role in a sex-video blackmail scheme has died. State corrections officials said Ronald Callaway, 55, died Saturday at a Trenton hospital. The cause of death was not disclosed. Callaway, also known as Jihad Q. Abdullah, was serving his term at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton. Callaway, his younger brother and a family friend were convicted in the blackmail scheme masterminded by another brother, former City Council President Craig Callaway.

ATLANTIC CITY - A former Atlantic City official jailed for his role in a sex-video blackmail scheme has died. State corrections officials said Ronald Callaway, who would have turned 56 this month, died Saturday at a Trenton hospital. The cause of death was not disclosed. Callaway, also known as Jihad Q. Abdullah, was serving his term at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton. It was not clear how long he had been in the hospital. Callaway, his younger brother, and a family friend were convicted in the blackmail scheme mastermind by another brother, former City Council President Craig Callaway.

THREE FILMS into Dito Montiel's critically dismissed, audience-ignoring moviemaking career, it is becoming clearer why top drawer actors, from Robert Downey Jr. to Al Pacino, Dianne Wiest to Chazz Palminteri, flock to Montiel's movies. And no, it doesn't involve compromising photographs and blackmail. Montiel, of "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints," "Fighting" and now, "The Son of No One," writes gritty urban melodramas with big, showy scenes and speeches. Movie stars just eat that up. "The Son of No One," about a cop covering up a dark day from his distant past and the code among cops that helps him do it, drew Ray Liotta, Katie Holmes, Tracy Morgan and Oscar winners Pacino and Juliette Binoche.

Guy in a trailer park kills his wife, you've got a news story. Rich guy kills his wife, you've got a news story with a book deal. Rich guy kills his wife, then starts wearing women's clothes - now you've got a movie. It's "All Good Things," very loosely based on the unsolved murder of the wife of an heir to a New York real-estate family. "Things" stars Ryan Gosling as David Marks (all names changed), a troubled young man who's never gotten over the suicide of his mother, which he witnessed as a child.

Vincent Gaudini Sr., a Harcum College alumnus, decided to throw his weight around last month when a debt came due from his alma mater, prosecutors say. Harcum, a two-year school in Bryn Mawr where Gaudini's sons, Vincent Jr. and Michael, also matriculated, was asking for $3,000 for Michael's unpaid dorm fees. Court records indicate the bill was not warmly received. Rather than pay, the elder Gaudini, 55, allegedly fired off an e-mail to Harcum's dean of student life, "respectfully requesting that you present Michael with a zero balance for his short stay at your facility" in exchange for silence about drugs and guns on campus.

Calling their crimes "despicable and sleazy," a Superior Court judge yesterday sentenced two political operatives in Atlantic City's "sex tape" case to lengthy state prison terms. Judge Albert Garofolo capped a two-hour sentencing hearing by lambasting Floyd Tally and Ronald Callaway for their roles in an attempt to force Atlantic City Councilman Eugene Robinson to resign by secretly videotaping him having sex with a prostitute in a seedy motel. Tally, 39, was sentenced to 12 years with no parole eligibility for six years.

ROBERT J. "Joe" Halderman, the TV news producer accused of blackmailing David Letterman in exchange for keeping quiet about his sexual affairs, was trying only to sell the late-night comic a screenplay, his defense attorney yesterday. Gerald Shargel, proving again that lawyers will say anything, asked a judge, who amazingly refrained from guffawing, to toss the attempted first-degree grand-larceny case, saying that Halderman had done nothing illegal in slipping Letterman documents alluding to the "Late Show" host's dalliances and taking a $2 million check from Letterman's lawyer.

Their motel-room encounter didn't last long, a former prostitute said yesterday, and only after it was over did she realize the man she was with was an Atlantic City councilman. "I thought, ' . . . This is way out of my league,' " Kristyn Haino told an Atlantic County Superior Court jury, explaining that the man had given her his business card and said he wanted to see her again. Haino, the prosecution's star witness in the so-called Atlantic City sex-tape trial, spent nearly three hours on the witness stand in Superior Court providing the down-and-dirty details of her tryst with Councilman Eugene Robinson in a seedy White Horse Pike motel back in November 2006.